Guide
How to say yes today
You cannot clench faith into being. You can consent to the gift in front of you. That consent is surrender: not inventing a grace, but saying yes to the one God is actually offering. These steps are for the hand, when the heart is still catching up. You do not have to be far along. You have to be honest.
St. Ignatius of Loyola trained that hand. He taught people to become free for God: to use things insofar as they help us to the end we were made for, and to let them go insofar as they do not. The Exercises are a school of that freedom. What follows is that school in ordinary hours.
A rule you can keep this week
- Morning: the Suscipe, or one sentence of offering, before the phone. The full texts are on Prayers.
- Once in the day: name the grace in front of you, and do the next honest thing — against the grain if you must.
- When you grip: “Take, Lord, and receive,” and put the outcome down.
- Night: the examen. Thanks, light, review, sorrow, hope. No despair. No new course set in the dark.
- One Gospel scene from the map, stood in, not skimmed. Sunday: the altar, without bargaining.
If you keep only the offering and the examen, keep those. Ignatius would rather you do a little every day than a great thing once. The hour in front of you is still the place of the yes.